Song of the Unicorns, Chapter 16: Another Highly Unusual Boss Battle

(If you’re reading the original edition, this is Chapter 13.)

Good news: the party got the unicorns back. Bad news: Their magic is gone.

And to make things worse, the Dark Knight shows up again, and it’s pissed. It starts scanning the party and the unicorns for the now-missing unicorn magic. Apparently Riannon ordered the unicorn foals to give their magic away, but they couldn’t focus it … so now they have no idea who they gave it to. Yeah, great job there, unicorns.

The Dark Knight finally discovers that Kara has the unicorns’ magic, so you know what that means:

The Dark Knight opens the battle by Polymorphing Kara into a banshee. This pisses off Kara, who fires a few Magic Missiles and Polymorphs herself into a sprite. The battle continues on in this fashion, with the Dark Knight transforming Kara into ugly things — the worst being a puddle of slime — and Kara changing herself into pretty creatures and firing Magic Missiles.

(Question: Why aren’t Emily and Adriane helping out during the boss battle? Emily could fire Magic Missiles now, and Adriane could spam Heal. There’s no reason for them to just stand on the sidelines.)

Meanwhile, Tweek finds a Goblin dictionary and spell-book in his HORARFF, so he could theoretically free the unicorns from their Tiny Net. Unfortunately, the only other member of the party who has a perfectly functioning Sparkly Rock is Ozzie, so it’s up to him to dispel the net. Ozzie’s early attempts at spell-casting fail epically, though, because Tweek was giving incorrect translations. So instead of freeing the unicorns, Ozzie grows a beard, and a shoe materializes on one of his feet. I get that this is supposed to be funny, but it was quite groan-inducing when I was reading it. (The best line is from the new edition, when Ozzie tells Tweek, “I’m going to focus you into mulch!”) Eventually Ozzie does recite the right spell, freeing the unicorns and somehow dispelling the beard and shoe he created.

Things don’t go so well for Kara, however. The Dark Knight eventually decides to spam Polymorph, which somehow allows him to steal Kara’s Polymorphing ability. Once the Dark Knight discovers that Kara possessed Skultum magic, not unicorn magic, it gets really pissed and creates a number of wild magic tornadoes. Luckily, the rest of the party is able to destroy them by casting Magic Missile. And while all this is going on, the unicorns are getting ready to spellsing.

And then Tweek decides to join the battle! Except all he does is surrender and explode in the Dark Knight’s face. Yeah, the party’s pretty much screwed.